Not that kind of Bone
May 12, 2010 11:00 AM   Subscribe

Bone - What Could Have Been. Animator Andrew Kaiko creates a few seconds of a hypothetical Bone movie using hand-drawn Flash animation and voices from the TellTale video games.

Bonus: an old AV Club interview with Jeff Smith that talks a little bit about the official adaptation still in the works from Warner Bros.
posted by kmz (15 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ah, Bone. I love Bone! It was the soul reason I insisted that my mom keep renewing my subscription to Disney Adventures long after I outgrew it.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:06 AM on May 12, 2010


Fuck, I didn’t know that the film is going to be CG and not hand drawn. Seems odd since part of the appeal of the comics were the classic Disney-style illustration.
posted by Think_Long at 11:06 AM on May 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


Not to worry. Look how great all those CG Garfield cartoons turned out!
posted by Thorzdad at 11:11 AM on May 12, 2010 [2 favorites]


But is it going to be in 3-D? Because I could see an argument to do this using CG if they could make it 2-D. Isn't The Simpsons done completely in CG now? It still looks like it's hand-drawn, they just use CG to make the whole process go faster.
posted by nushustu at 11:17 AM on May 12, 2010


aw man, bone in motion seems like such a gimme to me, Smith's genius for implying motion in the comic just seems like it would translate perfectly.

and yeah, it should be 2d. I don't care if it's done digitally or what, but let the lines show on the screen. His line work is perfect.
posted by shmegegge at 11:30 AM on May 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


I don’t know a lot of terms for animation, but I just assume that most of it is done on computers these days. What I mean by CG is more of the shrek/toy story route, and handdrawn as more of the Princess and the Frog 2D type thing.
posted by Think_Long at 11:33 AM on May 12, 2010


Love the Bone, but I just don't think it's going to be made right - no one will take the time to do hand-drawn, though carefully done CG (as nushustu says) could possibly work.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:36 AM on May 12, 2010


I love it, though I'm not into the voices.
posted by ORthey at 12:07 PM on May 12, 2010


South Park was made with Power Animator, then Maya. This was the same software that made Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. Computer animation doesn't mean 3D, but drastically shorter production times, though the end result often looks smoother or somehow different from hand animation.

That said, I want Bone to look like traditional cel animation, not anything like Happy Feet (though 3D animation made sense for that film).

I love it, though I'm not into the voices.

Voices are always so tricky for long-loved silent media. Unless the creator has an amazing ability to give characters a certain voice, people will be disappointed that the voices don't sound right.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:13 PM on May 12, 2010


I always heard Smiley Bone in Goofy's voice
posted by Think_Long at 12:42 PM on May 12, 2010 [2 favorites]


Stop-motion, anyone? Or at least cg giving the impression of it. I've seen Coraline and thought almost instantly to Bone. I'd love to see it done like that.
posted by darkripper at 12:54 PM on May 12, 2010


Telltale's animators are great at giving 3D characters life, even in the limits of their episodic format. If you cell-shaded a Telltale game the results would probably be surprisingly good, thought maybe not up to the quality of the 2D animation here.

Another game that did it fairly well (considering its age) is the late-era Dreamcast game Floigan Bros.
posted by JHarris at 1:38 PM on May 12, 2010


The purist in me would love to see this hand-drawn in black and white. Of course, that would still cost a lot of money to produce, so at that point they would definitely make it in color... but I can still dream.
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 1:54 PM on May 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


Wow, my son will love to see this. He devoured the Bone series when Scholastic re-released it in color, and also the Rose book, and another concordance-style book, and both Telltale games.
I do hope it captures the feel of the books though, since both of us are picky about book-movie match up.
posted by bashos_frog at 2:18 PM on May 12, 2010


I've heard this Bone movie thing on and off for quite a while, and I'm still unsure if it will be a good idea or not. Alas anything made for main stream movie audiences will be dumbed down and altered to let the viewer understand the characters from the start, opposed to actually needing to get to know them like we did reading the comics.
As much as I love the Bone figures I have too, I also fear seeing the McBone combo, with some 20cent plastic junk in a kids meal, if the movie got all those merchandise tie ins too.
Also seen many a good book horribly done as a movie, the actor is never what you picture, at least Bone won't have the issue with actors (oh god no, please no real life Bone, like that horrid Speed Racer) but there is still the voice actor issue.
posted by Merlin The Happy Pig at 4:42 PM on May 13, 2010


« Older Police State U?   |   All the single...children? Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments